State of the Heart: Exploring the History, Science, and Future of Cardiac Disease

In State of the Heart, Dr. Haider Warraich takes readers inside the ER,  inside patients' rooms, and inside the history and science of cardiac  disease.

State of the Heart traces the entire arc of the heart,  from the very first time it was depicted on stone tablets, to a future  in which it may very well become redundant. While heart disease has been  around for a while, the type of heart disease people have, why they  have it, and how it's treated is changing. Yet, the golden age of heart  science is only just beginning. And with treatments of heart disease  altering the very definitions of human life and death, there is no  better time to look at the present and future of heart disease, the  doctors and nurses who treat it, the patients and caregivers who live  with it, and the stories they hold close to their chests.

More  people die of heart disease than any other disease in the world and when  any form of heart disease progresses, it can result in the development  of heart failure. Heart failure affects millions and can affect anyone  at anytime, a child recovering from a viral infection, a woman who has  just given birth or a cancer patient receiving chemotherapy. Yet new  technology to treat heart failure is fundamentally changing just what it  means to be human. Mechanical pumps can be surgically sown into  patients' hearts and when patients with these pumps get really sick,  sometimes they don't need a doctor or a surgeon—they need a mechanic.

In  State of the Heart, the journey to rid the world of heart disease is  shown to be reflective of the journey of medical science at large. We  are learning not only that women have as much heart disease as men, but  that the type of heart disease women experience is diametrically  different from that in men. We are learning that heart disease and  cancer may have more in common than we could have imagined. And we are  learning how human evolution itself may have led to the epidemic of  heart disease. In understanding how our knowledge of the heart evolved,  State of the Heart traces the twisting and turning road that science has  taken—filled with potholes and blind turns—all the way back to its very  origin.